Abject Strongroom thrashed by Gardeners
Highgate Woods, 8/4/2007
Gardeners won by 102 runs
Gardeners: 196-4
Strongroom:
View the Scorecard
A reasonable Strongroom line-up was humbled by a Gardeners XI that once again played as much better all round team.
This was a blazing-hot, cloudless day and Strongroom birthday stand-in skipper Rich lost the toss. Strongroom bowled quite well first up on a pretty good (but still a little slow) Highgate track. Opener Woodhouse was neatly caught behind off the Horse and everything seemed to be fine. There then followed a big, match winning partnership by Gardeners pair Sutton and Dutta. They played well, certainly, but Strongroom fielding was average, and their catching in particular not good. Admittedly several chances were difficult, but there will still 5 or 6 of them, a couple of which at least should have been pouched.
Gardeners showed the value of wickets in hand as Strongroom wilted in the middle of the innings. Nobody bowled particularly badly, but the real thing that could have curtailed the run rate was wickets, and they refused to materialise. Rich, Horse and Mark Mellor each snaffled a wicket, and Bully secured a fine run out. Without an inspired, fiery second spell from the Horse and good death bowling from the skipper, Gardeners would have racked up well over 200 – a truly daunting score at Highgate.
Although they bowled OK, Strongroom continue to be one of the worst wide bowling sides in the northern hemisphere. The occasional offside wide is forgivable, but we bowl too many leg side deliveries (only some of which were signalled wide). How about keeping stats on this in future? Or we can start “Wide Watch” now - wide runs were leaked by Horse (4), Rich (4), Mark (1), Bully (1), Mike Gabbay (2), and Jolyon (2) – only Mat Court keeping on the straight and narrow. Overall, this was no improvement on the 14 wides given away the previous week in a 9 run defeat. Gardeners gave away 11 wides over the two matches versus Strongroom’s 28. On a brighter note, Claro leaked only a single bye in a generally tidy keeping display.
Tea Report 8.5/10 This was the one area in which Strongroom can claim to have outplayed Gardeners over the two fixtures. James Claro (or rather his girlfriend, Kirsten) pulled out a real winner including a range of sandwiches followed by a Devon cream tea including home made scones. Rich’s impending 40th birthday encouraged a couple of cakes to appear, along with some champagne. The park was full to bursting, and Strongroom received additional support (as well as cakes and bubbly) from their president, club captain, Chris Woolhouse and long-suffering fan Ol.
Strongroom’s reply started very badly, with Rich bowled off his pads playing an expansive stroke to the first ball of the second over. Mark Mellor and Dave seemed to have steadied the ship, with Mark looking in reasonable touch. However, Mark was carrying a bad hamstring and was soon bowled by a shooter playing an ambitious shot. Dave looked solid but found runs hard to come by against accurate bowling, and fell playing across the line. The loss of the top three seemed to inflict a mortal blow and the rest of the batting crumbled meekly. This was a poor, naïve and spineless batting display by any standards. There seemed to be too much concern over the required run rate, and not enough on digging in and establishing partnerships. Far too many batsmen were dismissed playing attacking shots to deliveries that could have been readily defended (5 were clean bowled). Number 6 James Claro (last man out) watched aghast at the non-strikers end as five men fell. Gardeners were never put under any pressure – when a partnership (even one that started below the required rate) would have helped to do so.
In some respects this was a worse version of the preceding week – Strongroom bowling a tight early spell and coming back well at the death, but leaking too many runs and failing to take wickets in overs 20 to 30, followed by losing wickets at regular intervals so that the run chase never really got off the ground.
Oh dear. Strongroom only 6-5 up now against Gardeners. Strongroom have lost their last 4 games and 5 of their last 6. Caribbean Mix next for a chance to get back on track…
Written By: David Gower
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